Mikalu

Mikalu is a bedding online shop. It is my 4th startup. While all of my startup had been closed down, this one prevail. I started it initially as a way to help my sister with her then-bankrupt offline bedding business. She used to sell bed sheet and/or bed cover offline with a store in Cipadu. Sometimes, she also tried to promote it online via Facebook. Her business didn’t run very well. She got drown in the competition (her store was located in one of the center of bedding industries in Indonesia). She got too many unpaid debt and no longer had enough capital to run the business. At that time, I was also just closing down my own business, Univind.

So, I thought that I could help her by focusing on the online business. Unlike her previous offline business which need quite a lot of capital for production, online business doesn’t really need that. With online business we could do a make-to-order business scheme. We make the product only after the customer paid for it. I proposed this idea to her and she agreed to do a joint online business. We named it Mikalu after her first son’s name.

In this startup my role is specific to all the IT and online marketing stuff, while her role is in production and general business development. I deal with the website development, server maintenance, search engine optimization, social media marketing, etc. The business runs pretty well from there. It has its ups and downs but it just keeps growing until now.